1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to power savings in a communications network. More specifically, the present invention relates to determining periods of interrupted data transmission to facilitate power savings in a wireless communications network.
2. Background Art
FLO is a technology designed primarily for the efficient and economical distribution of the same multimedia content to millions of wireless subscribers simultaneously. The goal of FLO technology is to reduce costs associated with delivering such content and allow users to surf channels of content on the mobile handsets typically used for traditional cellular voice and data services. This multimedia content is also known as services. A service is an aggregation of one or more independent data components. Each independent data component of a service is called a flow.
Services are classified into two types based on their coverage: Wide-area services and Local-area services. A Local-area service is multicast for reception within a metropolitan area. By contrast, Wide-area services are multicast in one or more metropolitan areas.
FLO services are carried over one or more logical channels, known as MediaFLO™ Logical Channels or MLCs. An MLC may be divided into a maximum of three logical sub-channels. These logical sub-channels are called streams. Each flow is carried in a single stream.
Typically FLO networks transmit the content for a service or MLC, every super-frame. There can be intermittent periods when there is no data being transmitted by the network for a certain duration on the MLC. If the device is forced to search for the MLC during these intermittent time periods, the device will be forced to consume power by performing this unnecessary search. This unnecessary power consumption will ultimately reduce battery life.
What is needed, therefore, is a system and method that will provide the device with information about these intermittent time periods. Knowledge of this information will enable the device to perform certain power saving operation like putting the receiver hardware in sleep mode, for the time interval when the data will not be available.